Struggling with Cricut Print then Cut? Here’s How To Fix It!

if you are someone that feels like you are constantly struggling with print and cut then you are in the right place today we're going to go over so many different things to help you overcome those struggles and make you a print and Cut Pro my name is Lauren I'm a craft producer here at Maker's Gonna Learn if you are new to our Channel make sure you like this video subscribe to our Channel and hit that Bell notification so that you can be notified every time we get crafty thank you so if you are ready to learn all the tips tricks and everything you need to know about print and cut get your notebook and pencil out and be ready to take notes because I'm about to help you learn all the things that you need to become a print and Cut Pro the first thing that I want to talk to you all about is learning when and when not to add an offset and I have discovered that this is a real issue for a lot of our crafty friends because I have discovered that when we pull in a PNG Cricut automatically puts it on a white canvas background so a lot of our times our brain thinks that because we are printing on a white piece of sticker paper that it's automatically going to have an offset but one thing that you need to learn is that design space does not know what we want it to know unless we tell it so let's go ahead and hop over to our share screen so I can explain and show you exactly what I mean and what you need to do to make sure that you don't have this issue ever again now that we're here in design space you can see that I have a lot of different pngs pulled up on our canvas now if you didn't know any better you would automatically think that this sticker right here the Cricut would just cut all the way around it cut this out very nicely and the same with all of these others however when you are pulling in pngs if you do not know if it has an offset or not your first thing that you should do especially when working on a white background is come down here to the bottom right hand corner where it says blank canvas we're going to click that and we're going to come up here to the top where it says color from there you're going to click on that color and you can change your canvas color to any other color except for white so I'm just going to go with gray and now you can see that everywhere that is gray your Cricut is going to cut out around that so if we zoom in you can see it's going to cut out all of these different letters in this Yeehaw sticker it's going to cut out the Stars individually in summer break and the only two that it will cut out around it is going to be this sticker here and this one here because it's automatically going to cut that Circle There's No Gray inside that so now we can see which stickers need an offset and which do not so now all we're going to do is come to each separate sticker and we are going to select offset and now you can make it as large or as small as you want I've discovered that I really enjoy the 0.15 inch offset I think it's a really good area it gives you enough room for error but it's still not too big so then you're going to apply that if you want it to stay black Cricut is going to automatically put all of your offsets black but then what you would do is come up here to the top where you see the up operations and you would just change the color back to white but keep in mind these are still separate once you have added your offset turn it to White you need to select them both by either dragging and dropping or selecting them both on your layers panel come down here to the bottom right and flatten those together so now you just have to go to each sticker add that offset change it to the color that you desire select them both flatten them together same thing with this one we are adding our offset applying it changing the color selecting them both see this one is just got the first one selected it doesn't have my offset make sure you drag and drop and choose both of them flatten them together summer break we're doing the same thing applying that changing the color dragging and dropping flattening them together hello summer offset apply change your color select them both flatten now I saved this one for last for a reason okay now this one if you run into this issue here is what you need to do so we're going to the go to the offset oh my gosh I have the 0.15 but I can see it's still going to cut out the inside of the sticker and I don't want it to do that well we're going to leave it on the 0.15 because I think it's a good size for the outside of the sticker we're still going to hit apply we're going to change the color to white but I still see gray in there so you're probably thinking Lauren what do I do first thing you need to do if you go to drag and drop you see that you can flatten this together but if we just select this offset let's say we want to get rid of those your first step is going to be go to Contour however when you go down to this bottom Contour is grayed out and we can't work with that here is what you need to do because this file was a PNG or a print and cut file to begin with your offset is also going to be a PNG which means you cannot Contour any of those inside pieces out what you need to do make sure your offset is selected see here on our layers panel we have the offset selected we're going to go back to the top left where it says operations and here you can see that that offset is a print and cut file we're going to click this arrow pointing down bringing our drop down menu and change it to a basic cut now it did change the color to gray so we're going to go ahead and change it back to White and now while the offset is selected coming back down here to the bottom right we can see that Contour is now an option for us so we're going to click that Contour we're going to hide all Contours which means it gets rid of everything on the inside exit out and now you see we have a perfect offset completely around your file so just like we did with the others we're going to click and drag and drop make sure they are both selected see we have them here both selected and flatten them back together now you should be ready to go with your stickers however I want to touch on something that may be more of a struggle mentally and that is you feeling like you waste so much paper when you are doing print and cut what you need to do is make sure that you are pre-planning to take up every single inch that you can on your paper now that may be if you're be doing a larger print than cut have some smaller stickers in mind that you want to create just to put on your page so that you can make sure you get the most out of that page of stickers because it's really really hard to use the same piece of sticker paper multiple times moms you can also manually move these stickers around and place them where you want them on the sheet because what Cricut does is it just automatically places those stickers where it thinks it is best however there are ways to manipulate that to really get the most out of your page and let me show you how you can do that once you have your stickers ready to go what you're going to do is go to make it and here you can see that Cricut has placed all of these stickers on two separate pages however I feel like there is still some room for us to work with so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to manually manipulate some of these files move them around you can turn them different ways here you can see we can place this one here I think if we turned this one long ways and then you can go here and you can hit let's say we wanted to move this one back to page one you can hit the three dots move object and move it to this page bring it over here and you can see we now have more room to work with once you have moved everything to the same page you can see we have saved a whole sheet of sticker paper and you are now ready to print another thing that you may be doing that may be giving you so much trouble is you are not using your system dialog it is very very important when you are doing print and cut to always use system dialogue now we also get the question what about bleed bleed is really there for when you do not have an offset or you have a do not have a white offset because we are printing on white paper for this instance we don't need to add bleed now if we had a black or a colored offset on all of these stickers and we wanted no room for there to be any white on there then that is when you would add the bleed because that gives more room for error if your Cricut is off just a hair when you are using system dialogue especially on a Mac computer you're going to hit print this may be look like it's loading for forever Windows tends to not have this issue it automatically pops up but if you are using a Mac what you need to do click Cricut design space pull it down because your dialog box is going to pop up behind Cricut design space another issue that we see a lot of people run into is not getting the best quality print so you need to make sure that you are always doing best quality and we love feeding our sticker paper from the rear tray we feel like it just gives a little bit better of a print it doesn't bend that sticker paper as much so make sure you are feeding from rear tray and you are using best quality always another issue we see a lot of Crafters running into is if they are using glossy paper getting lines through your prints so if you want to change your media type to photo paper that tends to give a better print on a glossy piece of sticker paper once you have printed your sticker paper I want to show you a few other things to help you have zero issues when it comes to print and cut you always always want to make sure that you line up your sticker paper in the top left corner this is especially if you are doing larger print than cut size if you have extra room on your left hand side of your paper you may have to cut that off to make sure it lines up in the top left corner you do not want your sticker paper lined up in the middle on the top right we're always lining our print and cut in the top left corner once you have done that we have a lot of friends that have issues especially with shiny sticker paper and the reason being is because a lot of times the brightness of the Lots in your room will affect your Cricut and how it reads those registration marks because the light bounces off that shiny paper first thing you need to try is turning off your lights because if you did not know your Cricut actually has a built-in lot in the housing here that will turn on once you load your print and cut paper if for some reason that still does not work Scotch tape is going to be your best friend what you're going to want to do is take the Scotch tape tear off a small piece and we're just going to cover up those registration marks and make sure it's down really well just to mattify those registration marks that way there will be no light bouncing off of them and it will give your Cricut more a better ability to read those lines another issue that some of our crafty friends have if you are printing on matte paper may be that your registration marks aren't dark enough and this could be because your printer may be low of black ink but do not fear if that's the case what you need to do is grab a Sharpie and take that Sharpie and then just go over your registration marks to darken them last but not least is if you are having issues and your Cricut is not cutting where it should cut make sure you always calibrate your machine now we have a lot of our friends ask how long or how often do I need to calibrate my machine and that's really going to be based on your machine and how it works as soon as you notice that your machine is cutting off that is when you need to calibrate now there is a regular calibration and a fine calibration and let me show you exactly where to find that to find your calibration you're going to come up here to the hamburger or the three lines in the top left corner click that you're going to come down here to the second place and you're going to click calibration because we have our Explorer 3 here in our studio today it only gives us the print and cut calibration so we're just going to select print and cut you're going to choose the printer that you are going to be using for your print and cut stickers and then you are going to print the calibration sheet once you have done that you are going to line your calibration sheet in the top left corner make sure it is down on your mat really well and then you're going to click continue you're going to choose your machine and then you're just going to follow the prompts on the screen what it's going to do is it's going to cut all of these lines 1 through 21 and then a through U and what you will do is go through and select which number cut right on the line and then which letter cut right on the line once you have chosen the number that cuts the on the line and then the letter your Cricut will know exactly where to cut and it's going to cut out that Center Square and your calibration should be complete and your Cricut ready to go I really hope you have enjoyed this video and I really hope that it has helped you troubleshooting all of your print and cut issues if you have enjoyed this video we have another amazing troubleshooting video for you to watch check it out here foreign

Channel: Makers Gonna Learn

Views: 10,895

Keywords: Cricut, DIY Cricut Maker, Cricut crafts, Cricut Tutorials, How to use my cricut maker, Cricut Maker tutorials, Cricut Easy Press, cricut design space, design space tutorials, how to use my die cutting machine, Cricut Beginner, Cricut Hacks, Cricut Tips

Id: rgEzG09Ynew

Length: 15min 49sec (949 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2023